Chapter VII.

Of the origin of principalities or powers.

None of the faithful
question the fact that before the formation of this visible creation
God made spiritual and celestial powers, in order that owing to the
very fact that they knew that they had been formed out of nothing by
the goodness of the Creator for such glory and bliss, they might render
to Him continual thanks and ceaselessly continue to praise Him. For
neither should we imagine that God for the first time began to
originate His creation and work with the formation of this world, as if
in those countless ages beforehand He had taken no thought of
Providence and the divine ordering of things, and as if we could
believe that having none towards whom to show the blessings of His
goodness, He had been solitary, and a stranger to all bountifulness; a
thing which is too poor and unsuitable to fancy of that boundless and
eternal and incomprehensible Majesty; as the Lord Himself says of these
powers: “When the stars were made together, all my angels praised
Me with a loud voice.”15271527Job xxxviii. 7 (LXX.). Those then who
were present at the creation of the stars, are most clearly proved to
have been created before that “beginning” in which it is
said that heaven and earth were made, inasmuch as they are said with
loud voices and admiration to have praised the Creator because of all
those visible creatures which, as they saw,
378proceeded forth from nothing. Before then
that beginning in time which is spoken of by Moses, and which according
to the historic and Jewish interpretation denotes the age of this world
(without prejudice to our interpretation, according to which we
explain that the “beginning,” of all things is Christ, in
whom the Father created all things, as it is said “All things
were made by him, and without Him was not anything
made,”)15281528 S. John i. 3. before, I say,
that beginning of Genesis in time there is no question that God had
already created all those powers and heavenly virtues; which the
Apostle enumerates in order and thus describes: “For in Christ
were created all things both in heaven and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether they be angels or archangels, whether they be
thrones or dominions, whether they be principalities or powers. All
things were made by Him and in Him.”15291529Col. i. 16.